BENNINGTON — A waste hauler has won state approval for a commercial composting operation in southern Vermont.

Trevor Mance, the owner of TAM Waste Management, said he was granted an Act 250 land-use permit last week for the operation in Bennington.

Mance had hoped to build a compost facility in his home town of Shaftsbury, but the town imposed a moratorium on commercial composting that is still in effect.

Bennington officials not only welcomed the facility, but approved its location on 10 acres of town-owned land, Mance told Vermont Public Radio.

The site will be on leased land at the town’s transfer station in an old gravel pit that’s no longer being used, he said.

It’s part of a larger effort to reduce the waste his company hauls farther and farther away as landfills close, he said.

“One local grocery store that we pick up produces almost 400 tons of food waste in a year. And we realized that there’s thousands of tons of organic waste that are just going in the landfill,” he said. “We could actually offset all our diesel fuel usage by recycling about I think it’s 10 tons per week of food waste.”